from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. Any instrument used in astronomy for observing distant objects (such as a radio telescope).

v. To extend or contract in the manner of a telescope.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

adj. Capable of being extended or compacted, like a telescope, by the sliding of joints or parts one within the other; telescopic

n. An optical instrument used in viewing distant objects, as the heavenly bodies.

intransitive v. To slide or pass one within another, after the manner of the sections of a small telescope or spyglass; to come into collision, as railway cars, in such a manner that one runs into another; to become compressed in the manner of a telescope, due to a collision or other force.

transitive v. To cause to come into collision, so as to telescope.

transitive v. to shorten or abridge significantly.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

To drive into one another like the movable joints or slides of a spy-glass: as, in the collision the forward cars were telescoped; to shut up or protrude like a jointed telescope.

To move in the same manner as the slides of a pocket-telescope; especially, to run or be driven together so that the one partially enters the other: as, two of the carriages telescoped.

n. An optical instrument by means of which distant objects are made to appear nearer and larger.

n. [capitalized] Same as Telescopium.

n. A telescope with its tube completely filled with water. Such an instrument was used by Airy at Greenwich, about 1870, as part of a zenith-sector, in order to settle by observation certain questions relating to the aberration of light.

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Lewis Carroll uses it often in dealing with Alice's growing and shrinking:

"Curiouser and curiouser!" cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); "now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!"